ABC plugs Greenpeace alarmism

Greenpeace is an extremist environmental activist organisation. It cares little for the plight of humanity, which it no doubt regards as a plague of locusts upon Gaia’s unblemished cheek, and is only concerned about “saving the planet”:

Greenpeace exists because this fragile Earth deserves a voice. It needs solutions. It needs change. It needs action!(source)

Fragile. Hmm. It’s been here 4.5 billion years… Ask the people of Pompeii or Krakatoa if they thought the planet was fragile.

Given that, it is extremely unlikely that any report issued by such an organisation on environmental matters would be balanced, fair or impartial, taking, as it necessarily would, the worst case scenarios to advance their fanatical crusades.

For more than two decades, climate scientists have warned that, unless heat-trapping emissions are reduced significantly, severe consequences from climate change will follow. Avoiding the worst impacts means limiting the rise in global temperatures to below 2°C – in itself an extremely rapid change compared with the Earth’s past. In November 2012, both the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the World Bank cautioned that the world is heading to a temperature increase of between 3.6°C and 4°C. With the additional CO2 from these 14 projects, the average global temperature will more likely exceed 4°C and quite possibly 6°C – the worst scenarios identified by climate scientists.

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The impact on people if we trigger catastrophic climate change will be terrible. In September 2012, a new report, commissioned by 20 governments, gave an insight into the disaster that is coming. It estimated that climate change is already taking 5 million lives a year. By 2030, deaths could total 100 million.

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Clean and safe renewable energy [with the exception of clean, safe nuclear generation, of course, the only real alternative to fossil fuels, because that is ideologically forbidden – Ed], coupled with a much-increased implementation of energy efficiency, can provide the power needed to run the planet and avoid the risks of pushing us ever closer to catastrophic climate change. That is abundantly clear from the astounding progress in the development of renewable energy over the past decade.

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The world is clearly at a Point of No Return: either replace coal, oil and gas with renewable energy, or face a future turned upside down by climate change.

So it is surprising that the ABC chooses to bestow respectability on this alarmism by soberly reporting on it in a mainstream news item, even going as far as embedding the PDF for easy access and download:

A new report has warned Australia to stop expanding coal exports or risk inflicting “catastrophic” effects of climate change on the world.

The Greenpeace-commissioned study identifies the expansion of Australian coal exports as one of 14 proposed coal, oil and gas projects around the world that will raise greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.

The study predicts Australia will increase coal exports to 408 million tonnes a year, producing an estimated 1,200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Greenpeace’s Georgina Woods says if the projects go ahead, they will warm the globe more than two degrees Celsius.

Whilst it seems that it is perfectly acceptable ABC editorial policy to plug an environmental activist group’s agenda, without any counterbalancing views, I think we can all imagine the howls of protest that would result if the ABC did the same with a report from, say, the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Not only that, but the ABC would ensure that they lined up a series of “experts” to debunk anything the GWPF claimed, and would make sure that the organisation was ridiculed and humiliated in the process (think about the ABC’s treatment of The Great Global Warming Swindle, where Tony Jones commented “I am bound to say The Great Global Warming Swindle does not represent the views of the ABC”).

Where is the statement that the Greenpeace report cited “does not represent the views of the ABC”? We must assume therefore that it does.

By such selective and unbalanced reporting, the ABC advances its own alarmist agenda, in clear and obvious contravention of its duty as a public broadcaster to be impartial (PDF):

The ABC has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism.

Aiming to equip audiences to make up their own minds is consistent with the public service character of the ABC. A democratic society depends on diverse sources of reliable information and contending opinions. A broadcaster operating under statute with public funds is legitimately expected to contribute in ways that may differ from commercial media, which are free to be partial to private interests.

Judgements about whether impartiality was achieved in any given circumstances can vary among individuals according to their personal and subjective view of any given matter of contention. Acknowledging this fact of life does not change the ABC’s obligation to apply its impartiality standard as objectively as possible. In doing so, the ABC is guided by these hallmarks of impartiality:

a balance that follows the weight of evidence;

fair treatment;

open-mindedness; and

opportunities over time for principal relevant perspectives on matters of contention to be expressed.

It really is time the people who run greenpeace were fully investigated, for [snip] being insane in in charge of a large organisation.

Personally, and I think think this could apply to many leaders… it should be a major crime to be insane as a leader – it’s about time we had anyone who wants to be at the top of their tree to prove their rationality.

We are in the mess we are in because of gross irrationality ….and once it gets to the top it breeds like greenpeacers (Ha)!

What can we do about the ABC? Isn’t there some way to force them to either explain or provide alterantive views… what’s the regulator we can go to? Couldn’t there be some form of broad petition or something?

One of the easiest ways to tell an ideologically false organisation is that it does the exact opposite of what it purports to do. If ‘Greenpeace’ is about ‘peace’, then why is it one of the most militant green groups around? Advocating one thing whilst doing another creates mindless zombies who can’t think straight anymore, as well as attracting psychopaths and sociopaths. Who was it that said “no-one can live with two faces, without eventually not knowing which is which”.?

Why don’t they just get it over with and call it the People’s Republic of Greenpeace, and have random missile displays as well?

The ABC has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is impartial according to the recognized standards of objective journalism.

The uncritical regurgitation of an activist group’s propaganda does not meet this test.

By such selective and unbalanced reporting as displayed in this news article, the ABC is in clear and obvious contravention of its duty as a public broadcaster to be impartial.

This is a shameful breach of trust and responsibility by ABC. As a single incident this might be overlooked, but this article is just part of an overarching trend at ABC, and calls for only one remedy – the revocation of your broadcast charter and the removal of all public funding.

Greenpeace seem to contradict the opinions of a consensus of the world’s leading experts

Greenpeace Report

The impact on people if we trigger catastrophic climate change will be terrible. In September 2012, a new report, commissioned by 20 governments, gave an insight into the disaster that is coming. It estimated that climate change is already taking 5 million lives a year. By 2030, deaths could total 100 million.

Changes in many extreme weather and climate events have been observed, but the level of confidence in these changes varies widely depending on type of extreme and regions considered. Overall the most robust global changes are seen in measures of temperature.

There is no basis at all for the five million people dying per year. Even worse, Greenpeace have ignored the output of their own economic models. The IPCC’s SSREN report of 2011 included estimates of the economic consequences of anti-AGW policies. The right set of policies would magically have no impact compared to the do-nothing scenario. The wrong set of policies could result in global per capita income being nearly 50% lower in 2050 than the do-nothing baseline, resulting in 330 million less people on the planet